


Blurred Places

by ElvaDeath



Series: The World of Draco Malfoy [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depressed Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy & Pansy Parkinson Friendship, Draco Malfoy Needs a Hug, Good Draco Malfoy, POV Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:33:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27549136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvaDeath/pseuds/ElvaDeath
Summary: There’s always one place in your life that you never truly leave.- E.D.
Series: The World of Draco Malfoy [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580998
Kudos: 19





	Blurred Places

**Author's Note:**

> It’s pretty short, I wrote it a while ago and decided to get it out here.
> 
> Enjoy!  
> \- E.D.

There’s always one place in your life that you never truly leave.

Draco thought it was the Manor for a long time. Even years after he moved out, sold the place at a measly percentage of its true worth, and burned everything he’d taken from there, he still couldn’t forget it. At night, he’d startle awake from nightmares of the dark hallways, bodies and blood and screams painting the inside of his skull until he couldn’t breathe. He’d see the colour green and think of choked wheezes after a venomous bite. He’d hear shattering glass and be thrown back to the falling of the chandelier, the cries ripped from Granger’s lungs, the sudden loss of that house elf.

But those were all events, random things attached to the Manor, and the building couldn’t contain the weight. Nothing could contain everything that happened in there. Besides, his whole childhood was wrapped up in those stone walls, all the good times as well as the bad. Everyone remembers their childhood home. So while he may look back and shudder at the thought of the place, he thinks that he is mostly free of it.

Standing here, he knows he’s found where his soul has been trapped all this time.

The wind is bitterly cold in December, even more so at this height. This part of Hogwarts has been mostly untouched since he last saw it, except for the plaque dedicated to him. He finds he doesn’t mind it. If the Manor collapses in on itself, he’d feel a little more free, but if this place changed, Draco thinks he’d lose every part of himself embedded in these bricks.

Because he never really left the Astronomy Tower, even when his feet carried him far far away.

The funny thing is, he wasn’t even close to the old man. He doesn’t feel his loss as deeply as he feels the loss of that Weasley boy, Fred. When Dumbledore’s body was laid down in his grave, Draco wasn’t thinking about him, not really. He was thinking about that night, in this place, where he’d let go of the last of himself and let it sink into the stone.

He sits on the floor. He doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, although he supposes it won’t make a difference. None of the others downstairs wanted him there in the first place. A decade after the Battle of Hogwarts, and he can’t blame them for shooting cold glares his way. It’s supposed to be a reunion to respect those who’d died in their year group, all of them present no matter their alignment in the war, but many Slytherins and even some others had declined. Draco doesn’t know why he’d agreed to come. Perhaps his subconscious knew he needed to look around, to find the missing pieces of himself.

A sudden gust of wind blows his cloak out behind him, whipping it into a billowing mass of black. His face stings from the biting frost, sending him further into his daydreaming. Sometimes he wishes he were able to focus more. His mind drifts a lot, like he’s jumped into the ocean and is pulled by the tide, water surrounding him and blocking him from feeling much. He looks out of his eyes and moves his limbs and pinches himself, but the world is dull and he’s so far away from it, trapped inside his skull in this drifting ocean of nothing.

He didn’t used to feel like this. It happened somewhere between leaving this tower and casting his first working crucio. Or maybe he always felt like this, but was too busy with school and friends and making himself look better than Potter to realise it. Hiding in his private places in the Manor gave him time to think, to realise things about himself he’s never quite sure he wanted to know.

One of those things was the loss of this part of himself, which he feels now in this place. It’s like he’s been here for all of his life, but has never quite recognised it. Almost like the muggle’s god has meant for him to be here all along, and everywhere else he’s been was just a short stop on the road here.

“Dray?”

He turns his head slightly, catching a glimpse of Pansy as she hovers by the top of the stairs. He didn’t hear her come up.

“What are you doing here?”

“Thinking.” He responds, looking back at the plaque.

She walks closer, her heels clicking and marking every step as a full stop. “It’s cold out here, why would you choose this old- oh.”

There’s a pause then, and Draco can almost hear her mind clicking and turning over. He would speak, if he had words to say. If he knew what he was thinking, he would tell her. That’s what he’s been trying to do ever since his mother died. Get the words out, and he’ll feel better. But when he has no words to describe this heap of nothingness, if he doesn’t understand why he just does things like this, how can he ever tell anyone?

She sits beside him, shivering in her elegant black dress, fur around her shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. I’ve heard he planned it all. He was dying anyway.”

“That’s not the point.”

And it isn’t, at all. The point is that he came up here, with the intention of killing him. The point is that he would have, if pushed enough. The point is that no matter how much talking about it he does, he can’t convince himself that this was anything but his choice. The point is that he was here all those years ago, and he hasn’t left. 

“Then tell me what the point is.” She turns to him, brown eyes pleading, and he feels so much worse for breaking her heart with his lack of words. “Why did you come up here?”

“I don’t know.” To find a part of himself he’s missing? To come home? None of it feels right. It’s all in his head anyways, his mind has become incredibly talented at convincing himself of so many wrong things. He’s so afraid to tell her that he’s missing a part of himself, because what if he isn't? What if this is just a bad day? What if it’s just the result of another rejected job application, another angry landlord, another spat insult in the street?

“Draco…” She wraps an arm around him, her fur tickling his cheek. “Come inside, and we’ll talk. The Golden Trio have gone to visit Hagrid, and most of the worse ones have wandered off too. We could even go down to the potions lab, try out a new recipe without having to spend so much money.”

“You hate potions.”

“But you love them, and I love you, so I’ll put up with it. Besides, I would adore a little explosion or two, just to stir things up. Maybe we could recreate that one from fourth year, where it dyed your hair purple and we spent the rest of the night trying to reverse it.” She smiles, squeezing his shoulder encouragingly.

“Yeah.” He tries smiling back, focusing on her hand on his shoulder to fill the void in the middle of his stomach. “Yeah, ok.”

“Come on then.” She stands, holding out a hand for him to take and pulling him up with her. “I just hope the old slug will be too busy pandering over our more famous classmates.”

He snorts, hand tightening around hers as she moves to pull away. She glances at him, but keeps it there, intertwined around his so he can feel the warmth of her skin. In a while, the fuzzy emptiness might be gone, or it might stay until he sleeps tonight. It’s hard to tell. For now, her hand in his has to be enough for him to at least fake feeling.

Down the staircase. It feels wrong. It feels like he’s left himself up there, his ghostly soul sitting on the ground and waiting, while his physical body walks away. He should go back up there, sit back down, and… what? Wait for something. Wait for what? He doesn’t know.

He’s a little lost, so he follows Pansy through the hallways of a place so familiar and so foreign, and tries to forget that he’s left himself in the place where he died.


End file.
